Three's Alive, Have a Pie!
by koga-rashii
Summary: A short one-shot that describes a hypothetical situation in which Three survives the encounter with Mogadorians. Co-written with Tactum Ignis.


The door starts shaking. It's a flimsy thing made of bamboo shoots held together with tattered lengths of twine. The shake is subtle and stops almost immediately. They lift their heads to listen, a fourteen-year-old boy and a fifty-year-old man, who everyone thinks is his father but who was born near a different jungle on a different planet hundreds of lightyears away. They are lying shirtless on opposite sides of the hut, a mosquito net over each cot. They hear a distant crash, like the sound of an animal breaking the branch of a tree, but in this case, it sounds like the entire tree has been broken.

"What was that?" the boy asks.

"Shh," the man replies.

They hear the chirp of insects, nothing more. The man brings his legs over the side of the cot when the shake starts again. A longer, firmer shake, and another crash, this time closer. The man gets to his feet and walks slowly to the door. Silence. The man takes a deep breath as he inches his hand to the latch. The boys sits up.

"No," the man whispers, and in that instant the blade of a sword, long and gleaming, made of a shining white metal that is not found on Earth, comes through the door and sinks deeply into the man's chest. It protrudes six inches out through his back, and is quickly pulled free. The man grunts. The boy gasps. The man takes a single breath, and utters one word: "Run." He falls lifeless to the floor.

The boy leaps from the cot, bursts through the rear wall. He doesn't bother with the door or a window; he literally runs through the wall, which breaks apart as if it's paper, though it's made of strong, hard African mahogany. He tears into the Congo night, leaps over trees, sprints at a speed somewhere around sixty miles per hour. His sight and hearing are beyond hearing. He dodges trees, rips through snarled vines, leaps small streams with a single step. Heavy footsteps are close behind him, getting closer every second. His pursuers also have gifts. And they have something with them. Something he has only heard hints of, something he never believed he'd see on Earth.

The crashing nears. The boy hears a low, intense roar. He knows whatever is behind him is picking up speed. He sees a break in the jungle up ahead. When he reaches it, he sees a huge ravine, three hundred feet across and three hundred feet down, with a river at the bottom. The river's bank is covered with huge boulders. Boulders that would break him apart if he fell on them. His only chance is to get across the ravine. He'll have a short running start, and one chance. One chance to save his own life. Even for him, or for any of the others on Earth like him, it's a near impossible leap. Going back, or going down, or trying to fight them means certain death. He has one shot.

There's a deafening roar behind him. They're twenty, thirty feet away. He takes five steps back and runs-and just before the ledge, he takes off and starts flying across the ravine. He's in the air three or four seconds. He screams, his arms outstretched in front of him, waiting for either safety or the end.

And then he actually starts to fly. He blinks, once, twice, as he rises higher and higher, and figures out what's happening. He's gained a new legacy. He can fly. It's probably the only legacy to get out of this hostile situation safely.

When he finally gains control of his new legacy, which only takes a few moments, he shoots forwards, quickly glancing backwards to see what had been pursuing him. What he sees horrifies him so much that he begins hovering in midair instead of moving forward. A man, scarred so hideously that he feels the urge to throw up, stands where he had leapt from. Except, he cannot be called a man. He is a monstrosity, a creature that stands taller than mankind and radiates a power that most would kill to have. It is almost terrifying.

Then, he notices something far worse. Two pendants, nearly identical to his own, hang from the the creature's neck. The boy averts his gaze for a moment to hold up his pendant until it is in his line of vision. It glows dimly, and seems to pulse slightly like it has a heartbeat of its own.

He drops the pendant, feeling the familiar weight of it settle into place, before realizing that the pendants around the creature's disfigured neck are not glowing at all.

 _It's like he killed them._

The realization causes him to begin plummeting like a heavy stone dropped in water. He almost does not right himself in time. A second too late and he would have become a pancake.

He breathes in sharply through his teeth and veers upward, until he hovers shakily in the air. He looks back at the monstrosity and the being holds up the two pendants and then grins with shark teeth.

"This is what's coming for you!" The boy hears him even though he's almost 100 feet above the ground. He flies back suddenly and barely gets a hold of his power. The person holds up his fist and blue lightning issues forth, arcing towards him.

The boy shoots up, somehow knowing he shouldn't be anywhere near the lightning. He curves, flying faster than a bullet towards the hut that lays in a pile of splinters. His Cêpan's body lies, the sword wound barely visible only as a small slit over his heart as the boy flies over.

A wooden chest is concealed well within the canopy, vines wrapped around it and huge leaves covering it. The boy rips through them. He can hear the being thundering back, his every step shaking the trees. He has only seconds.

He pulls the wooden chest free, just as Señor Shark Teeth his pursuer appears behind him, wearing a malicious grin that stretches his already grotesque features.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" the man chuckles, his large feet causing dents in the ground as he stomps over to the terrified boy. The boy tries to escape into the air, but the chest is too heavy and the creature's hand, shot through with obsidian veins, snaps out and yanks the boy backward.

The man's smile only grows wider, contorting the scars that decorate his face. "No running," he says almost mockingly. "Let's have a civil conversation instead.

The boy knows that the man's definition of a civil conversation involves lots of blood and gore. His eyeballs dance wildly in its sockets as he looks around frantically, searching for an escape route.

Knowing exactly what the boy is thinking of, he lets out a wild laugh, one that is laced with insanity and bloodlust.

The boy traces the obsidian veins with his eyes. They all converge into one huge black artery inside the man's elbow. The boy, lightning fast, strikes at the man's elbow with a stiffened knuckle, and the man yells and pulls back in reflex.

He takes the opportunity to launch himself into the air, straining his muscles as he struggles to stay in the air while holding onto the chest.

The man's face twists into one of distaste as the boy unsteadily floats away.

 _The boy may have won. For now._

 _But like everything else, the boy will eventually cease to live. The only thing that is uncertain about this is the "when." I will catch him, and kill him, slowly and painfully._ The man thinks grimly before lumbering away, subtly rubbing the area where the insolent boy had struck him.


End file.
